Investigation into Micropipeline Latch Design Styles

Paul Day and J.Viv. Woods

Abstract

An asynchronous implementation of the ARM microprocessor has been designed and fabricated based on Sutherland's Micropipeline approach. Reviews of this work have shown that considerable performance improvement may be possible in a number of key design areas. This paper assesses the effects of different design styles on the micropipe- line latch structures used.

The original design has latch structures based on pass- transistor transparent latches. An evaluation of the use of single-phase transparent latch structures is given plus the application of 2-phase and 4-phase control techniques.